Excerpts from, "A New Earth... Awakening to Your Life's Purpose" by Eckhart Tolle...
...millions of years ago...the first flower probably did not survive for long, and flowers must have remained rare and isolated phenomena...
...much later, those delicate and fragrant beings we call flowers would come to play an essential part in the evolution of consciousness of another species. Humans would increasingly be drawn to and fascinated by them...
...flowers were most likely the first thing they (human beings) came to value that had no utilitarian purpose for them, that is to say, was not liked in some way to survival...They provided inspiration to countless artists, poets, and mystics...
The Buddha is said to have given a "silent sermon" once during which he held up a flower and gazed at it. After a while, one of those present, a monk called Mahakasyapa, began to smile. He is said to have been the only one who had understood the sermon. According to legend, that smile (that is to say, realization) was handed down by twenty-eight successive masters and much later became the origin of Zen.
Seeing beauty in a flower could awaken humans, however briefly, to the beauty that is an essential part of their own innermost being, their true nature. The first recognition of beauty was one of the most significant events in the evolution of human consciousness. The feelings of joy and love are intrinsically connected to that recognition.
Without our fully realizing it, flowers would become for us an expression in form of that which is most high, most sacred, and ultimately formless with ourselves. Flowers, more fleeting, more ethereal,and more delicate than the plants out of which they emerged, would become like messengers from another realm, like a bridge between the world of physical forms and the formless.
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Answer to yesterday's question: "What Is Unusual About This Paragraph?"
It was written without the letter "E."
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Nekked Lizard Lady created the new banner from the roses that AnodeMan gave to Swampy who took the photo.